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Saturday, November 8, 2008

Seems like I've been doing a lot of that lately. This whole miracles business isn't all it's cracked up to be, let me tell you. It's been a long couple of weeks. BUT...the quarter is almost over, and there is still hope that I will pull it all off before then. I just need to manage not to crack from stress before the end of the month, and everything will be great. There is still a chance that I'll make it. So, enough about spinning that kind of wheel.

I have been spinning another kind of wheel lately, too. I've honestly been too frazzled to knit this week (I know...). You see, knitting would involve sitting still, and I'm just not up to that right now. So, I've been doing something that at least lets me sit around and tap my foot a lot. Today, I even got to tap two feet at once, which might be even better. Except that it makes the wheel go really fast.

The scary thing about spinning is how fast you can make yarn. I've spun about 3 oz this week, and I've been going pretty slowly. I can just feel the stash swelling coming on...

This morning, I went to the second week of spinning class, where we talked about things to look for in a fleece (this all made a lot of sense to me, having already explored in great detail all the things that one might want to avoid). I was hoping that we'd spend more time on plying, but we didn't get to it until the very, very end, so I guess I'll have to go back for the intermediate class if I want to know how to actually turn my singles into balanced yarn.

But of course, I want to turn them into yarn now. I had some scrap singles from class that weren't really enough to do anything with, so I decided to teach myself to Navajo ply this afternoon. It's a really cool technique, and besides having some rather serious coordination and timing issues combined with some wheel tension drama at the outset, I managed to produce something that was reasonably close to even.

It is even, but it is completely unbalanced. Way overspun. (Probably related to aforementioned tension issues...my wheel is out to get me.)

Tonight, I took the growing handspun collection and gave it a bath. Twist is now setting. I'm plotting what to do with it once it's dry, but I'm not sure yet what it will become. Those wheels are spinning, too.

It is dark and I am lazy, so there are no pictures of yarn setting twist in the bathroom (trust me...it doesn't look like much anyway). I have a teaching workshop to lead all afternoon tomorrow, but I am hoping that I will manage some knitting sometime soon so that I'll actually have something to say next time I pop online to ramble.